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‘Philosophy’ comes from the ancient Greek ‘φιλοσοφία’ — philosophia.
What is philosophy?
philosophia = philo + sophia philo = love
sophia = wisdom
What does it mean to love wisdom?
Socrates, who was in some ways the first philosopher, contrasted lovers of
wisdom with two other sorts of people.
The first were people who formed belief on the basis of custom or tradition rather than argument.
The second were rhetoricians and sophists who used arguments, not to form true beliefs, but to achieve some
other end.
What does it mean to love wisdom?
Philosophy, by contrast, is the attempt to form true beliefs about the world on the basis of reason.
Can you think of any other academic departments at Notre Dame that might describe themselves in this way?
This is no accident. All of these other fields — the natural sciences (like physics, chemistry, and biology), the social and human
sciences (like economics, sociology, psychology, and political science), and others — were once part of philosophy. Isaac
Newton was a philosopher; so was Charles Darwin; so was Adam Smith.
Yes, quite a few. Physics, economics, psychology, biology, sociology, political science (maybe) …. the list goes on and on.
This is all, we (current) philosophers think, excellent. But it is not complete. There remain questions — fundamental, basic
questions — which we have not been able to devise any science capable of answering. Those questions are the province of
philosophy.
We can put the same point in a more general way. The sciences have particular methods which are designed to deliver answers to
some limited range of questions. Philosophy is the completely unrestricted discipline: it is the attempt to use our reason to answer any question whatever about reality. As we will see,
philosophy so understood is not really an alternative to scientific investigation of the world: it is an attempt to understand the nature of reality which incorporates rather than opposes the
results of the sciences.
These great philosophers went on to form systematic new ways of answering the questions in which they were interested. These
‘new ways of answering questions’ are just what we now call ‘sciences.’
In this class, we’ll be focusing on five of these fundamental questions.
Is there a God?
What am I?
Do I have free will?
What should I believe?
How should I live?
The main aim of the course will not be for you to learn what other people have thought about these questions — though you will do
that too. The main aim of the course will be for you to develop your own views on these questions. You will be evaluated mainly on the
basis of your ability to defend those views by argument.
And to do that, you will have to learn a bit about what arguments are, and what makes arguments good or bad. I will come back to
that in a bit. But first, some nuts and bolts about how the course will work.
If the main thing you are going to be asked to do in this class is to argue for your views, and respond to arguments against your views, you need to know something about arguments. The study of arguments is logic.
A first step in grasping the basic principles of logic is the mastery of four (semi-)technical terms.
Arguments consist of one or more premises and a conclusion. The conclusion is what you are arguing for; the premises are the (alleged)
basis for that conclusion.
The two key terms used in the evaluation of an argument are valid and sound.
Arguments consist of one or more premises and a conclusion. The conclusion is what you are arguing for; the premises are the (alleged)
basis for that conclusion.
The two key terms used in the evaluation of an argument are valid and sound.
an argument is valid when it is impossible for its premises to be true and its conclusion false
an argument is sound when it is valid and has all true premises
Validity and soundness are the two most fundamental concepts for you to grasp in this course. Let’s illustrate them by considering some
example arguments.
1. All men are mortal. 2. Brian Kelly is a man. ———————————————————————————————————————
C. Brian Kelly is mortal.
an argument is valid when it is impossible for its premises to be true and its conclusion false
an argument is sound when it is valid and has all true premises
1. All men are mortal. 2. Brian Kelly is mortal. ———————————————————————————————————————
C. Brian Kelly is a man.
One way to show that this argument is invalid is to focus on its form.
an argument is valid when it is impossible for its premises to be true and its conclusion false
an argument is sound when it is valid and has all true premises
1. All men are mortal. 2. Brian Kelly is mortal. ———————————————————————————————————————
C. Brian Kelly is a man.
One way to show that this argument is invalid is to focus on its form.
You’ll notice that certain words in the argument are repeated.
To get the form of the argument, replace every repeated expression of this sort with a ‘dummy letter’ — sort of like a variable. That gives us the
following form of the argument:
1. All F’s are G. 2. x is G —————————————————————
C. x is F.
Can you think of any argument of this form which has true premises and a
false conclusion?
This shows that this form of argument is invalid — which in turn is good evidence that the argument at the top, which is of this
form, is invalid.
1. Either Notre Dame will win the National Title in 2017 or USC will. 2. USC will not win the National Title in 2017. ———————————————————————————————————————
C. Notre Dame will win the National Title in 2017.
What is the form of this argument? Is every argument of this form valid?
an argument is valid when it is impossible for its premises to be true and its conclusion false
an argument is sound when it is valid and has all true premises
1. If the moon is made of cheese, then it will soon become moldy.2. The moon will not soon become moldy.--------------------------------------------------------------------------- C. The moon is not made of cheese.
Here’s a slightly trickier one:
an argument is valid when it is impossible for its premises to be true and its conclusion false
an argument is sound when it is valid and has all true premises
1. If the moon is made of cheese, then it will soon become moldy.2. The moon will not soon become moldy.--------------------------------------------------------------------------- C. The moon is not made of cheese.
What is the form of this argument?
One way to put it would be as follows:
1. If P then Q. 2. Not Q. —————————————————————
C. Not P.
Is every argument of this form valid?
If an argument is sound, can it have a false conclusion?
If an argument is unsound, can it have a true conclusion?
If an argument is valid, can it have a false conclusion?
If an argument is invalid, can it have a true conclusion?
Mastering the concepts of validity and soundness gives you way to talk about, and criticize, arguments.
Suppose that you are presented with an argument for some conclusion that you think is false, and you want to criticize that
argument. The most straightforward way to do that would be to show that the argument is unsound.
Soundness = validity + true premises. So to show that an argument is unsound, you can do one of two things: show that it is invalid, or
show that it has a false premise.
But there are other ways to criticize an argument as well.
Here’s an argument:
There’s a pretty clear sense in which, if I gave this argument right now, it would be a bad argument. But it is valid; and you can hardly claim
that it is unsound, since you do not know whether the premise is true or false.
1. The number of beer bottles on Notre Dame’s campus right now is odd.
C. The number of beer bottles on Notre Dame’s campus right now is not 496.
The right criticism of this argument seems to be, not that it has a false premise, but that we have no reason to believe that the premise is true — and hence no reason to believe that the argument is sound.
A first step in thinking clearly about arguments, and learning how to talk clearly about arguments, is distinguishing between things you can say about individual premises and conclusions,
on the one hand, and whole arguments, on the other.
One can sensibly say that a premise or conclusion is true, or false, or unsupported by the evidence. But it makes no sense
to say any of these things about arguments.
By contrast, one can sensibly say that an argument is sound or unsound, valid or invalid. But it makes no sense to say any of
these things about individual premises or conclusions.
You will talk some more about validity and soundness in your discussion sections this Friday. Next time we will put these
tools to work discussing an important attempt to answer the first question which will occupy us in this course:
Is there a God?
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